Keep me sane my darling
by Moniregar
Summary: Then he goes back to his room and lays in bed, sighing content, because as long as his cup is full of Petra's coffee, as long as she is up in the roof every night and as long as he can dream a house in the countryside, everything is fine.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Attack on Titan and its characters.

**Keep me sane my darling.**

Before she came along, the one in charge of the kettle was a boy with sad eyes and anything remarkable. Just an average boy who made average and insipid coffee. Dull, like everything.

Eventually he died and was substituted and if when Captain Levi had gone to the dining hall the following morning to take his morning coffee and it had tasted the same, he would had never noticed the change in the staff. But he did, because the coffee in his cup that morning wasn't his usual. It was sweet and creamy but bitter nonetheless. Exquisite. So he drinks it fully and goes to work.

Next morning he goes to the dining hall more eager, wondering if yesterday's coffee was a accident, a wrong mix of ingredients that resulted good and if today would be insipid once again. But it is not; it tastes like heaven again, so he drinks it fully and goes to work in a better mood.

Next morning he goes to the dining hall and his cup is empty. He arches an eyebrow but waits. Shortly after the new coffee maker appears, apologizes, serves him and leaves while Captain Levi watches her attentively and dismisses her, noting her lateness as a rookie mistake. And he drinks her coffee fully while she serves the rest of his squad and goes to work.

The next week Captain Levi goes to the dining hall and she is there too again. He watches her serving his squad smiling, Auruo blushing and the rest laughing. They call her Petra. His cup is full so he drinks Petra's coffee fully and goes to work.

The following month Captain Levi goes to the training fields to check on the progress of the new recruits. Petra is there, twisting in the air graceful but deadly with her long strawberry blonde braid curling with every movement. She is good. So he wants her in his squad.

She is immediately ascended to be part of the Humanity strongest' special squad. She is nervous at first, she watches her words around him and tries harder than anyone in the trainings to keep up with whatever expectations she thinks he made of her. But she adapts quickly and soon enough the dining hall is ringing with her laugh, laughing at whatever Gunter told her while she makes her coffee and serves her captain and the rest of her friends.

And every morning is the same but is not. Soldiers still do their duties and fulfill their training schedules but something changes. People starts to like lingering longer in the dining hall. They like to recline in the chairs with their cup in theirs hands, ask her for seconds and ask her to teach them how to make coffee as good as hers, and tell old, sometimes invented, anecdotes to each other, trying to stay as much as they can in each others company. Everyone included Captain Levi. He doesn't tell anecdotes though, nor laughs at the soldiers' antics but stays nonetheless, because paper work is not appealing enough to make him leave. So he drinks her coffee fully, asks her for seconds and stays.

The following week Captain Levi goes to the dining hall and there're no laughs. Everyone is serious thinking in the expedition ahead drinking from theirs cups quietly. Petra is not there so Captain Levi drinks hes coffee fully and goes to get ready. Everybody is scared, many of them die, the remaining cry but Petra survives and he is glad.

Usually, people expects people like Petra to break down and cover at the sought of so many deaths. But as he watches her crying silently for her friends, her fist on her heart while she watches the fallen burn, the flames making her hair and eyes look like they are on fire and her tears like diamonds Captain Levi can't do anything but admire her. She is made of steel.

So that night when he hears somebody walking in the corridors when everybody is supposed to be asleep he knows it's her. And he gets up and looks for her, following the sound of her steps to an opened window and finds her sitting on the roof with a mug between her hands.

-Petra what are you doing here?

She looks away – Thinking.

-No, I mean here, in the Survey Corps.

And she looks at him with her eyes of honey –fighting for humanity of course, and you,sir?

- For Humanity and its freedom.

But that's a lie. A motto he repeats whenever somebody asks him. What else Humanity's strongest could be fighting for if not humanity itself. But that's a lie because humanity had never done anything for him; a small child thrown into the underworld city, refused by his mother and denied by his father, left to grow into one of the more dangerous, abandoned by his friends after Erwin arrested him and made him fight for a cause that wasn't his and plunged him into a world of blood, tears and death. Humanity had done anything to deserve his efforts to save her.

–That's a lie, isn't it? –she asks and he remains silent –don't worry, I won't tell anyone –she tells him.

And Captain Levi exhales, relieved and for an unknown reason he feels at ease for the first time in a long time. So he sits down in the roof and stays.

For the next months, Captain Levi wakes up and goes to the dining hall. There, he drinks her coffee fully, listens to the soldiers anecdotes, asks Petra for seconds, stays longer than necessary and goes to work, does his training, attends to the meetings and plans the next expeditions. And at night he climbs out the window and meets her, wrapped in blankets and with a mug in her hands and Captain Levi feels at ease. Sometimes they talk and sometimes they don't and sometimes she laughs and his stone heart feels warmer and his grieves lighter.

But Captain Levi is careful because he knows he is cursed. He cannot let Fate know about her because if Fate notices it will take Petra away like it did with everything he held once dear. But days pass and Petra keeps on surviving and she becomes a constant, an unbreakable toehold in a world where human lives are as ephemeral as the wind, and the roof, a refuge. So when, one night she tells him her dream, he wonders if it's okay to share it. A house in the countryside, big enough to hold lot of children, away from the city and surrounded by the north meadows. And she looks so dreamy while telling him, so beautiful, that he wants to make it real for her.

-I know it's silly, but is what I'm fighting for.

-It's not silly Petra-he tells her.

-Captain?-he looks at her –why did you choose me to be part of your squad?

-Your skills are outstanding, that's why –a pause –plus, you keep me sane, and that's more than I can say of Erd.-and she laughs.

Time passes and people start noticing that their Captain is not as harsh as before nor as aloof and they wonder why. And then she arrives and he relaxes and everyone notices. And then she laughs and he smirks lightly and everybody notices. And he watches her while she is not looking and everybody notices. And he loves her but keeps it quiet and everybody notices but keep it quiet not wanting to break the spell.

And even if he has her at arm reach he does not reach for her, because if he does Fate would notice and take her away. So he contents himself by watching her, smelling her lavender perfume in the corridors, drinking her coffee every morning and dreaming at night with a house in the countryside.

And then the brat, Eren, appears and everything rushes. Suddenly the Survey Corps are loaded with insane amounts of work that need to be done in order to keep the kid safe that Captain Levi cannot go to the dining hall anymore. He accepts it because the brat can give them an advantage over the titans and make her dream realer. So instead going to the common area, he asks Petra to bring her coffee to his office. He misses the dining hall but as long as his cup is full of her coffee it's okay, so he drinks it fully and starts to work.

And then everything goes wrong.

He finds her the last. The rest is dead but she is not. He needs her not to be. He finds her bent against a tree on the floor so he lands softly beside her and dreams she is still breathing. So he picks her up carefully while other soldiers pick up the others and brings her back to where the horses are. Erwin orders withdrawal. Too many deaths for a day.  
The bodies of the death are piled in a cart and when the titans catch up with them they are thrown away because they are nothing special. But she is. So he carries her back in his horse carefully between his arms and into the safety of the walls.

Captain Levi enters the infirmary with her in his arms, lays her in the cleanest bed and wipes the blood in her face. She is sleeping so he whispers the doctor to take care of her and leaves. But when the doctor turns and checks Petra's pulse he wonders how Captain Levi wants him to heal her.

Next time Levi goes to visit Petra in the infirmary she is gone so he supposes that she is off recovering at home with his father. She deserves it.  
For some days Captain Levi goes to the dining hall and his coffee tastes like shit until one day its starts tasting like Petra's usual heavenly taste again so he supposes she back to duty. But something is strange. The dining hall does not ring with laugh anymore, nor the soldiers tell anecdotes and they do not linger more than necessary anymore so Captain stops liking the dining hall and starts taking her coffee in his office again. But at night when he climbs to the roof she is there, in her blankets cocoon, and everything is fine.

She explains him that she cannot longer be part of his squad but that she will still make his coffee and come to the roof at night so he nods, sits down in the roof and stays.

True to her word, every morning Captain Levi goes to his office he smells her perfume n the corridors and finds his cup is full so he drinks it fully and starts to work.

Eventually Captain Levi gets tired of Erwin and the rest and the pity looks they give him. He knows it's because of Erd and the others but what he doesn't understand is why Hanji breaks down and cries every time he mentions Petra. And people curse his black heart because he doesn't mourn for the fallen soldiers. But he doesn't have anything to mourn for because Petra is still here and the others are in a more peaceful world. Everything is fine.

It never occured to him that the soap every soldier used was lavender perfumed nor that maybe it was someone else who was making the coffee because Petra's coffee is Petra's coffee, not somebody else's coffee. So he ignores Erwin and the rest's looks, drinks her coffee fully and goes to work, to train and to make new strategies and at night he climbs to the roof and stays with her until dawn. Then he goes back to his room and lays in bed, sighing in content, because as long as his cup is full of her coffee and her smell linger in the air, as long as she is up in the roof every night and as long as he can dream of a house in the countryside, everything is fine because

"You keep me sane my darling"


End file.
